Apple’s September 2016 Media Event: Spoiler-Free Video Stream

Apple’s “See you on the 7th” media event will be kicking off at 10:00 AM Pacific today, and as is tradition some MacRumors readers who can’t follow the event live are interested in avoiding all of the announcements and waiting until Apple posts the recorded video of the event so as to experience it without already knowing the outcome.

For those individuals, we’ve posted this news story, which will be updated with a direct link to the presentation once it becomes available from Apple. No other news stories or announcements will be displayed alongside this story.

Apple has become quicker about making event videos available for replay over the past several years, and videos are now frequently available within an hour of an event’s conclusion.

Users waiting for the video to be posted are welcome to gather in the thread associated with this news story, and we ask that those who follow the events refrain from making any posts in the thread about Apple’s announcements.

Tags: spoiler-free, September 2016 event
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Gmail: Ultimate guide

It’s time to take control of Gmail.

With over a billion monthly active users, Gmail is one of the most popular email clients around. The service has come a long way from its inception in 2004, and is continually adding new features and better spam prevention. If you’re new to Android, or if you’re just are looking for ways to get the best out of Gmail on the platform, read on.

Gmail is a part of Google Mobile Services, a collection of apps and APIs that are pre-installed on every Android phone certified by Google. If you have an Android phone that has the Play Store pre-installed, you’ll also find Chrome, YouTube, Maps, Photos, Hangouts, and Play Music and Movies available out of the box. Let’s take a look at what Gmail has to offer on Android.

Before we begin: You should enable two-factor authentication for your Google account if you haven’t done so already. Security breaches are inevitable, and having an added layer of protection for your email account makes all the difference in the world.

• How to send email using Gmail
• How to format emails and add emojis in Gmail
• How to add attachments in Gmail
• How to add a secondary Google account in Gmail
• How to add an Outlook or Yahoo Mail account in Gmail
• How to merge inboxes in Gmail
• How to adjust preview settings in Gmail
• How to add a signature in Gmail
• How to prioritize your inbox in Gmail
• How to mute emails in Gmail
• How to archive or delete emails in Gmail
• How to recover deleted emails in Gmail

How to send email using Gmail

Open Gmail from the home screen or app drawer.
Select the floating action button (circular button with a pen icon in the bottom right corner) to compose a new mail.

Enter the recipient’s email address in the To field.

Use the downward arrow symbol to see Cc and Bcc options.

Enter the subject and body of the text.

Tap the arrow button to send the email.

How to format emails and add emojis in Gmail

Google added rich text formatting in Gmail for Android earlier this year, giving you the ability to add text colors and underline, italicize, and bold text. And yes, you can also send emoticons within an email.

Select the desired text with a quick double tap.
Tap the Format button from the action menu.

Select from bold, italics, or underline. You can also change text color and background.

To add emoji, tap the emoji button.

Select your desired emoji and add it to the text.

How to add attachments in Gmail

With Gmail, you can attach local files — including documents, photos, or videos — or send files stored on Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other cloud storage services. Local attachments are limited to 25MB, and for anything larger than that you’ll have to upload the file to Drive first. Doing so lets you share files up to 10GB in size.

Select the floating action button to compose a new mail.
Tap the attach button to select files.

Choose Attach file to insert local files or use Insert from Drive to attach Drive files as links within the mail.

Using the Attach file option is straightforward. Select the file from the menu to embed it in the mail.

Insert from Drive follows a similar flow.

Once you select the attachment, you’ll see a preview at the bottom of the mail.

How to add a secondary Google account in Gmail

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Select the arrow next to the account name.

Tap Add account.

In the set up email section, select Google from the list of services.

Enter your Account email ID and password.

If you’d like to create a new account, select Or create a new account.

You can also add a secondary Google account by heading into your device’s settings:

How to add a secondary Google account on your phone

How to add an Outlook or Yahoo Mail account in Gmail

Gmail also allows you to add email accounts from third-party services like Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Exchange accounts, or your own mail server.

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Select the arrow next to the account name.

Tap Add account.

Select your desired email service from the list.

Add your email ID and password.

How to merge inboxes in Gmail

If you have two or more email accounts on the same device, you can see all emails in a single view.

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
select All inboxes.

All your emails will be displayed chronologically in the All inboxes view.

How to adjust preview settings in Gmail

If you’re using a device with limited screen real estate, or would like to see more text in the email preview, you can disable sender images.

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Go to Settings.

Select General settings.

Deselect the Sender image checkbox.

Now you’ll be able to see more preview text in your inbox.

How to add a signature in Gmail

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Go to Settings.

Select the account for which you want to add the signature.

Tap the Signature field.

Enter the desired signature text.

The signature text will be added at the bottom of every email.

How to prioritize your inbox in Gmail

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Select Priority Inbox.

Emails that are directly addressed to you will be surfaced above promotional messages.

You can also mark emails manually to let Gmail know that they’re valuable to you. That way, upcoming mails will be sent to Priority Inbox.

Long press anywhere on a mail or select the sender image to show the action menu.
Tap the three dots in the top corner to bring up the menu options.

Select Mark as important. Doing so will change the priority of the email.

How to mute emails in Gmail

If you’re part of a mail chain that is getting out of hand, you can mute the conversation. Doing so moves the mail thread to the archived section, and you won’t be notified of any incoming messages in the chain. The mail will still be marked unread.

Long press anywhere on a mail or select the sender image to show the action menu.
Tap the three dots in the top corner to bring up the menu options.

Select Mute.

How to archive or delete emails in Gmail

Long press anywhere on a mail or select the sender image to show the action menu.
Select the archive icon to archive an email.

Select the delete icon to move it to the trash.

You can archive or delete multiple emails in one go. After selecting a mail, press the sender image for subsequent mails you wish to move to the trash or archive. You can also use quick actions to delete or archive a mail by swiping left or right on the mail. To select the default action for the swipe gesture, do the following:

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Navigate to Settings.

Select General settings.

Tap Gmail default action.

Select between Archive and Delete.

How to recover deleted emails in Gmail

If you’ve deleted a mail by mistake, you can recover it by navigating to the trash.

Tap the hamburger menu on the top left corner.
Navigate to Trash.

Select the mail by a long press action.

Tap the three dots in the top corner to bring up the menu options.

Select Move to.

Choose Inbox to move the deleted mail back to your inbox.

Your turn

That’s a quick look at what Gmail has to offer on Android. We’ll show you how to use various search parameters to search your mailbox, how to use labels and filters effectively, add aliases to Gmail, and more later this week. In the meantime, let us know what tricks you rely on to manage your inbox.

Here’s why Google Play Music needs an alarm feature

Recently, Google Play Music added a sleep timer to its popular app at long last. If you fall asleep to music, congratulations — our phone doesn’t have to run your lullaby all night! It’s a wonderful addition to the app, one that brings two questions to my mind: where’s a Material Dark theme so we aren’t blinded listening before bed, and where’s an alarm feature so we can wake up to music, too?

They’re designed to startle you, you learn to ignore them after a while, and they mostly sound terrible. Why would you wake up to one of those when you could wake up to music? Ever since I learned I could wake up to CDs as a little, music-loving girl, I’ve made it a point to wake up to some of my awesome tunes. I used a CD alarm clock, then an iPod alarm clock, and then I came to Android… and I had to find something else.

Alarms suck. Google Play Music is exactly what you need to make them better.

Faults and all — and there are faults aplenty — I love Google Play Music, but it wasn’t accessible as my morning alarm. So I tried traditional alarms, and I tried the DoubleTwist alarm clock, but nothing ever seemed to click. Then I discovered Tasker. Tasker had the ability to trigger my current Google Play Music queue, giving me back the wake-up routine I had so missed since I switched to the service. I’m not gonna deny the tears I shed when testing the profile and finding it worked.

But why couldn’t I do it on Google Play Music in the first place?

Well, Google Play Music tracks aren’t accessible to any other apps, so unlike iPhones, we can’t take songs from Google Play Music and make them alarms or ringtones directly. So that means that in order to use Google Play Music as an alarm clock, we either need an alarm function built right into the app, which I’ve wanted since day one, or we have to turn to some third-party hackery.

While Tasker has gotten me by for the last few years, I’m ready for a first-party solution. Millions of people wake up to music, and if Google Play Music allowed them to wake up to their app, those people could make Google Play Music a part of their daily routine. Those people would also be more likely to buy and keep All Access.

No one should understand better how important music is than a music service, and they should strive to make sure their music is what its users count on every moment of the day, whether they’re drifting off to dreamland, or being drawn back to the waking world. Google Play Music needs an alarm function.

They also need a dark theme to go with it!

Bear Grylls confirms: New Land Rover Discovery has seats you can fold with a smartphone

Land Rover is going to be unveiling the new Discovery on 28 September, with a radical shift in design for its luxury SUV model.

With the Discovery Sport recently unveiled, it looks as though the new Discovery adopts some of that softer and more sporty design, moving on from the squarer and blocky looks that originated from its Defender-Range Rover fusion when it launched in 1989. 

Land Rover hasn’t revealed the full design, although it’s clear as camouflaged day to see in this video featuring Bear Grylls.

The focus of Grylls’ stunt is to prove how versatile the new smart seating configurator is, with the ability to change the seat layout from your smartphone.

That means you’ll be able to fold the seats up or down as you approach the vehicle carrying that massive 55-inch TV you’ve just bought from John Lewis, not just when falling out of a plane.

The seats can be controlled not only from the InControl Remote app on your iOS or Android smartphone, but via switches within the vehicle (how very conventional), as well as adjusting the rear seats from the car’s main touch display.

Land Rover

The app will also let you check the fuel status, check whether you closed the windows, find your car or pre-condition the vehicle to bring it to a comfortable temperature before you get in.

The full unveiling of the new Land Rover Discovery will take place on 28 September, when we’ll bring you all the details of this new premium SUV.

Audeze Sine review: When Lightning strikes

With Apple expected to ditch the 3.5mm jack, iPhone users will have two choices: either brave it in the world of wireless earphones, or find a Lightning connector-equipped set of cans. 

The Audeze Sine fits in the latter category. With industrial design taken from the BMW group’s Designworks studio, and some innovative audio technology, your iPhone, iPod or iPad will have never had it better.

If your device is not equipped with a Lightning connector, avert your eyes now. This review is not for you. Well, sort of: there’s a 3.5mm cable in the box too, but you won’t squeeze all the glorious audio out of these cans.

Audeze Sine review: Design

First thing’s first, the Sine cost £450. Yep, they’re not budget by any means, so you’ll need to wrap your brain around that before you can wrap the Sine around your ears. Still, as Audeze goes that’s actually not too steep – which might sound mad, but that’s the truth of it.

Pocket-lint

With high-end headphones there can be a temptation for manufacturers to over-engineer products. With the Audeze Sine headphones, however, everything feels purposeful. It’s not just a pretty pair of headphones to look at, all the hinges and movement is fluid and solid.

The soft black leather combines with the angular and minimal aluminium frame to create a headphone that screams aesthetic quality, without being in-your-face about it. It’s stylish and sleek, soft and comfortable to wear, yet durable and deliberate.

Because there’s no audio cabling inside the headphone unit itself, the headphones have been given complete freedom of movement.

Pocket-lint

The earcups attach to the headband using a strong, but light, metal frame which has pivot-point half way down the side. This allows the cans to move nearly 45-degrees, while another point at the top means swivelling around 180-degrees is possible to lie the headphones flat when packing them away for transportation.

As well as that, the arms (or forks) that hold the earcups to the headband are infinitely adjustable. There’s no clicking system for incremental increases in headband length. It’s all completely smooth and noiseless. Indeed, all movements afforded by the beautiful industrial design are that way. It’s heavenly.

Because this movement is so smooth, it fits on to your head very comfortably, but we did find that – although the headphones stayed on – they didn’t feel as reassuringly tight as some other headphones out there (such as our V-Moda, which some might find too pinching by comparison). In many ways, it felt as if we weren’t wearing the Sine at all, which is pretty wonderful. They can be worn for hours at a time without becoming tiring or overly warm.

Pocket-lint

The earcups themselves have an ear-shaped, almost triangular design, meaning you can’t wear them the wrong way around. The 3.5mm input jacks on each are recessed at an angle to ensure a solid connection, and to make it difficult for the cable to be yanked out accidentally. And with the cable being flat, it’s almost impossible to get it tangled up.

Audeze Sine review: Sound

The Audeze Sine boast a couple of firsts. These are the first on-ear headphones to include planar magnetic technology. These are three times larger than typical on-ear drivers, giving you better quality audio with more bass.

Pocket-lint

The diaphragms inside the earcups are super thin and almost weightless to ensure you get virtually no distortion. Regardless of which audio or tracks we listened to in our testing, there was no detectable hissing or buzzing of any kind.

They also have a wide frequency response, which essentially means that it doesn’t matter how low the bass or high the treble: you’ll get the full spectrum of sound.

The second first? Audeze has equipped the Sine with the first 24-bit Lightning cable, so-called the Cipher cable. So if you’re an iPhone fan and are into hi-resolution audio, plus you want a great future-proof pair of headphones for when Apple gets rid of the 3.5mm jack, these could be ideal for you.

The Cipher cable features an in-line system-on-a-chip (basically a mini computer) dedicated to delivering great sound from your iPhone. This inline SoC is built into the remote control/mic unit and features a DAC (digital audio converter) and DSP (digital signal processor) for high quality 24-bit hi-res audio, alongside a microphone and dedicated amplifier. In short – you’ve never had music sound so good from an iPhone (if you have the hi-res files to match, anyway).

Pocket-lint

Perhaps the icing on the cake is that there’s a dedicated 10-band equaliser app for iOS, which lets you fine-tune the audio balance. Even better, you can save two EQ presets, which are saved directly onto your Lightning cable/SoC, so that you can have your own preferred audio profile when you switch between devices – say iPad to iPhone. Very clever.

The result of all this high-end technology is an audio experience that’s practically unbelievable for a pair of on-ear headphones that cost under £500. The sound is full and well-rounded. And even though bass levels are notable, they don’t overpower. It’s the kind of quality that lets you get lost in the music.

If you stream using lower-quality services like Spotify, Apple Music or Google Play Music, you’ll still get a great sound. But to get the most from these headphones, we found that using Tidal’s HiFi subscription and lossless audio quality was more refined, and less grainy. We suggest trying the same to see what you make of it – as not everyone is sold on the hi-res audio game.

Pocket-lint

It’s worth noting that the headphones do ship with a regular 3.5mm jack equipped cable as well. So you can use them with any device, but you will miss out on the bespoke DAC+amp goodness if you opt to use it. Which, depending on your source material and device, might be no biggie given the quality of these cans.

Verdict

It’s rare to find a product that’s almost impossible to fault. The Audeze Sine design isn’t ostentatious, so if you want a pair of headphones that deliver the kind of audio you’d expect from top-of-the-line products, in a design that’s subtle and considered, these are a perfect pair. Sound is completely customisable, too, plus there’s just more of it because of the built-in amplifier and DAC.

The only issue we found – if you can even call it that – came down to personal preference: we’d like to have a more snug fit, but that would more than likely mean losing the completely smooth adjustment and floaty fit.

Obviously the price point is a bit of a hurdle, but for top notch quality – whether normal or hi-res, using the Lightning connector or not – the Audeze Sine may well be the only over-ear headphones you’ll ever need. And for that reason they’re worth the investment.

NASA’s most experienced astronaut lands back on Earth

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams has landed back on the planet after a record-breaking stint aboard the International Space Station. He just spent 172 days on the orbiting lab, bringing his total time spent in space to 534 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes. That makes Williams the most experienced NASA astronaut, snatching the title of “American who has spent the most time off the planet” from his colleague Scott Kelly. If you’ll recall, Kelly came home from a one-year ISS mission in March, which brought his total to 520 days, 10 hours and 33 minutes.

Expedition 48’s Commander Williams installed an ISS space taxi dock with fellow astronaut Kate Rubins in mid-August. The dock would give Boeing and SpaceX a way to ferry astronauts to the station, finally freeing NASA from hitching a ride on Russian rockets. Since those taxis won’t be ready until 2017 or 2018, though, Williams had to come home aboard a Soyuz with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka. Besides breaking records and doing spacewalks, he also captured stunning photos of our planet from above during his stay — check them out if you need one more reason to feel envious as a land-locked space lover.

Welcome home! @Astro_Jeff returned to Earth after US record-breaking @Space_Station mission: https://t.co/DWsir5wsiH pic.twitter.com/aizcDNMGNP

— NASA (@NASA) September 7, 2016

Source: NASA

Watch how VFX artists crafted ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

ILM has unveiled the official “sizzle reel,” for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, showing how it did major visual effects for the movie. If this sounds familiar, an apparently unauthorized making-of video made the rounds early this year, but was quickly pulled. The franchise is the gold standard for VFX, though, so fans can once again get a look behind the curtain, seeing how shots were created at houses in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver and London.

The dramatic reel goes in chronological order and includes scenes from the desert planet Jakku, the TIE fighter Star Destroyer escape and the light saber battle on the Starkiller Base. Shots often start with just an actor in a studio, and are fleshed in by dropping in layer after layer. Oftentimes, ILM marries practical shots (real desert and forest backgrounds) with digital models. In other cases, however, it’s all created inside a computer.

The Starkiller trench attack scene, for instance, starts with crude 3D model. Thousands of intricately detailed layers literally fly into the scene (complete with whooshing sounds effects), and are lit and shaded. To complete the realism, ILM artists composite in smoke, lights and weapon fire. In the end the impressive final result, which took God knows how many man-hours, passes across the screen in just seconds.

Source: ILM (YouTube)

Tim Cook Comment Prompts Speculation iPhone 7 Will Support Apple Pencil

Over the weekend, Apple journalist John Gruber highlighted a comment made by Tim Cook during an interview with NDTV’s Vikram Chandra back in May, in which the Apple CEO was asked what he thought Steve Jobs would make of the Apple Pencil.

NDTV: Has that voice never come to you? For example when you launched the pencil and you know what Steve said,’ if you see a stylus they blew it’, when you launched that pencil?

Tim Cook: Well we launched a pencil, not a stylus, first of all, and there’s a big difference, and the things that people are doing with this pencil, I think that Steve would have loved. He loved to help people create. And if you’ve ever seen what can be created with that pencil on an iPad or an iPhone, it’s really unbelievable. You should really show some of these to your audience.

Gruber wondered whether Cook had simply misspoken, or if he had perhaps let slip that Apple was internally using the Pencil with its upcoming iPhone.

Apple’s Pencil currently only works with the iPad Pro because of the display technology required to achieve the tool’s high responsiveness: the iPad Pro’s screen features a subsystem which scans the Pencil’s signal 240 times per second, enabling it to detect position, force, and tilt at the individual pixel level.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously claimed Apple will release new iPad Pro models next year, but with the fate of the iPad mini uncertain, it’s conceivable that Apple may discontinue the tablet and pitch the iPhone 7 as its smallest creative device by adding support for the Apple Pencil. Alternatively, it could restrict support for the tool to the iPhone 7 Plus, which would serve to further differentiate it from the new 4.7-inch handset and give pre-recall users of the Galaxy Note 7 – which has a stylus – another reason to consider switching devices.

Based on display improvements introduced in the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, DisplayMate’s Ray Soneira has speculated the iPhone 7 display could include similar features such as True Tone, as Apple often expands display advancements across its entire product lineup. Whether or not this includes the subsystem required to support the Apple Pencil remains unclear.

With just hours to go before Apple’s iPhone 7 event, we’ll know for sure later today. Apple will provide a live stream of the keynote on the Apple TV and on iOS and Mac devices through its website, starting at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. MacRumors will also have full coverage of the event, with a live blog on our front page at MacRumors.com and updates in 140 characters or less through our @MacRumorsLive account on Twitter.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: John Gruber
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